


People are Strange

by threewalls



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Community: hc_bingo, Community: trope_bingo, Consent Issues, F/F, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Side Effects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 18:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1719011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaw is an alpha. Root is an omega in heat. </p><p>What does either thing have to do with how well Shaw does her job?</p>
            </blockquote>





	People are Strange

**Author's Note:**

> Set between Mors Praematura and the Crossing (ie Root is restricted to the library Faraday cage). Alpha/beta/omega universe, with all the consent issues that that sort of thing flags up. My usual asexual Shoot headcanons apply, but this is too early in their acquaintance for them to have had any conversation about that.
> 
> For trope_bingo: "au: alt gender norms" and h/c bingo: "side effects".

Shaw takes the library stairs two at a time, and shoulders through the door to Finch's command post, gun raised and ready. 

She clocks Reese and Finch by Finch's desk. Bear's lying on the floor, head down but watching her. Reese has his hand on the butt of his gun, but instead of pulling, he only raises an eyebrow in her direction.

Shaw holsters her weapon.

"Who've you got in here?" she demands. "Is it the new number? I like living dangerously but I didn't think you two did."

"I must confess to a small act of subterfuge," Finch says.

"You're telling me you're faking this? On purpose?"

If it's fake, it's good. Really good. Less than a minute's exposure and Shaw can already feel her core temperature rising. She doesn't take suppressives because she doesn't like to live reliant on anything but herself. That, and a lack of self-control has never been Shaw's problem. 

"Without a number to occupy our attention, I thought we could have that discussion about the particular way you have with our numbers now, Miss Shaw. I apologise for the necessity of the lie, but I did try to ask you directly first." 

There's tea on the table by them, the steam curling up from a china pot. Three cups. Cookies. But it only smells like a faint hint of grass threaded through the musk that's so thick through the air.

"Lying about etiquette class doesn't explain the smell."

"What smell?" Reese asks, and at least he glances back around the room once more, sniffing. 

Reese isn't sweating, his suit collar pressed and pristine. Neither is Finch. Shaw's never cared which way round it is with them, but one of them should be as affected as she is. Especially when they've been exposed for long enough for the pungent, delicious scent to roll all the way downstairs.

"Of course." Shaw groans in realisation. 

They can't smell it for the same reason she hadn't worried that she was about to bust in on them rutting on the library sofa. The way she knew it wasn't one of them she could smell.

"Oh, you two are never pretending to be unbonded ever again." 

They both go completely still. Neither blushes, because they're all so good at hiding shit from other people, but you can't hide a heat trail this thick and rich. 

Not unless you're bonded and completely out of the chase.

"Miss Shaw, perhaps it would be best if you could explain to Mr. Reese and I what it is that you think you can smell?" Finch says.

"That I'm in heat," sings out a light voice from the Faraday cage around the corner. "I guess you were right, Harold. The machine did bring me here for a reason."

Just Root's voice makes Shaw's pulse accelerate, makes her clit thicken, just the usual, typical, bodily reaction of her alpha hormones to the pull of an omega at just that time of the month. A moment's distraction in the fall of someone's hair, the curve of their ass. Happens all the time. You blink and move on.

"It's interesting," Root says. "My heats have never been this strong. Never ever. I've never really had to focus much on, well, bodies. But it's synthetic omega hormones they give you as a suppressive, you know, when they think you're an alpha and that you're a danger to others."

Reese leans across into Finch's space. "Is that what you've been giving her?"

"I'm afraid so, Mr. Reese. I had considered it likely that she altered some aspects of her medical records before we had her admitted to Stoneridge, but given Miss Groves's aggressive behaviour, alpha status did still seem statistically likely, regardless."

Shaw had pegged Root for an alpha, too, another bitch trying to get one up over her. Trying to manage her, order her around, see Shaw scuttle. Omega should have made Root less interesting.

Heats should make omegas needy, make them eager for self-stimulation and to beg alphas, any alphas if you wait long enough, for relief. Root's voice is barely trembling.

"Of course, it was easier to palm the pills there than here. But it would be hard for Stoneridge to know as much about surveillance as you do, Harold."

Shaw strides through to the cage. Root's wide smile widens, but her eyes are glassy. Her body is pasted up against the metal mesh of the cage, her fingers laced through it.

Even if Root's musk wasn't all Shaw can smell, she's showing all the major symptoms. A drop of sweat rolls from her hairline to her nose, dripping from the tip. Dark patches under her arms, and Shaw can just bet Root's not turning around for anything. Hard to make do with sponge baths during a heat.

"How long?"

"This is day four."

Shaw's eyebrows shoot up. Four days. She glances at how tight Root's grip is on the cage, guessing that's how she's still standing. Was she going to wait until Finch or Reese noticed? Or just wait out the whole week? 

"That's some high pain tolerance you got," Shaw murmurs. Despite how annoying Root can be, Shaw is impressed.

She's also aroused as hell, and Root's way past that. Shaw sways her head side to side; Root's pupils don't track the movement. 

Bright smile, wet tongue swiping across her lips. "Dying to see how much more I can take?"

"Miss Shaw!"

Finch and Reese have followed her. Shaw didn't notice when that happened. 

"Hey, Finch?" Shaw turns around; the metal mesh of the cage bites into her fingers. "You still got that taser I confiscated off her?"

"Let me get that for you." Reese disappears back into the stacks.

"I hardly think electro-shock therapy--"

"You've never told me where you went to medical school, Finch."

Finch probably doesn't want to know about how much fun Shaw's had with violet wands, or how lucky he is that Shaw is a good soldier, that she was a good doctor, that she can stay on target even when her vision is tinting red. 

Finch starts to walk away. Shaw doesn't follow. The distance helps. 

A little.

Maybe he's the alpha, maybe he's just used to too much money to think about how he's talking down to Shaw right now. At least Hersh trusted Shaw could do her job. Right now, Finch reminds her more of her residency supervisor.

"I can have Mr. Reese pick up the correct suppressives within the hour."

"Root's halfway through heat week. We are past prevention here." 

Shaw can hear the faint huffs of breath behind her. Root is smelling her hair. 

"The other recommended therapeutic treatment is manual stimulation until I pass out."

Root's comment is almost worth it for the way it stops Finch, the wide-eyed look of horror he gives them. Almost, because after that, Root adds, quiet in Shaw's ear: "I still owe you a turn tying me up, don't I?" 

Shaw can feel the fever-heat from Root's body pressed up against the cage wall behind her, and the sweat collecting on her own body. Abdominal breathing through her nasal cavity calms the rage, but pulls in more musk with each inhale. It's all Shaw can taste now. Normal alpha body reactions: could they be more inconvenient?

"Yeah," Shaw says. "Manual stimulation is exactly what it sounds like and so much not what you pay me for, Finch. So about the taser and the key to the cage?"

"And some privacy," Root chirps.

"Once around the block can't hurt, Finch."

Reese has the taser for Shaw and Finch's coat. Finch looks like he's thinking of arguing but doesn't, not when Bear is prancing around their feet at the jingle of the clip on his leash. He makes Shaw promise to "keep him informed" but gives up the cage key.

"Finally," Root sighs, pushing herself up off the cage wall. "I thought they'd never leave us alone." 

Shaw motions with the taser for Root to move further back into the cage before opening the door. Without the wall's support, Root's obviously unsteady on her feet.

"So how do you want me?"

Root drops like a rock.

"Quiet," Shaw says, when Root's body stops jerking. That feels good in a way that has nothing to do with heat.

Shaw checks Root's vitals and rolls her onto her side, arranging her limbs into the recovery position and pushing back the hair from her face.

Four days. Shaw would bet good money Root hasn't slept in at least forty-eight hours.

The tea in the cups is cold and tastes like grass. It makes her mouth wet with something other than her own saliva. Shaw moves the tea set, tray and all, into the cage before locking Root back up.

The tea in the pot tasted like concentrated grass, but Root will need the rehydration when she wakes.

Shaw texts Finch the A-OK as she walks out of the library and then walks ten blocks in no particular direction, checking for tails, before she stops. Back against a building, Shaw draws the chaotic, mixed up scents of city air into her lungs in big gulps. She can still smell omega heat musk in her clothes, in her hair. It has to be all in her head. She just thinks she can still smell it. Shaw would be turning traffic giving off a scent trail like that and she isn't.

She changes direction, heading for tonight's hotel room. A long, hot shower dulls the edge of her arousal back below a simmering distraction. Time to page through her little black book.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also comment at my [LJ](http://threewalls.livejournal.com/377052.html) or my [DW](http://threewalls.dreamwidth.org/263018.html).


End file.
